The Garlic Circle, or maybe it is a Garlic Spiral, is making it’s last turn around 2010. This week garlic bulbs will be distributed in your share.

The garlic story is such an interesting one and I’m not sure if we are now at the beginning or the end. Garlic Scapes, the twisty green garlic seed heads, were one of the first vegetables in your share last spring. We remove the scapes to force the plant to send more energy to the bulb and not into making a seed head. The bulb has continued to grow throughout the springtime into summer and we harvested the bulbs in July. The bulbs have been hanging in the barn on the rafters curing and drying. We took about 1/3 of the harvest to separate the bulb head into individual cloves to plant as next years crop. Each clove will produce a head next season.

The seed garlic has just been planted and will send out some roots and bed down for the winter. Next spring the scapes will once again emerge and fill your share.

The garlic bulbs that are remaining in the barn are for the CSA shares. The heads are a bit smaller than last season due to the lack of rain all summer but the taste is great.

We have been saving our garlic seed for many, many years and it is now a mutation of the original stock which was Russian Red and German White. You will see the slight red tinge on the bulb which is from the Russian Red. Russian was always smaller but more robust and it seems that over the years it has slowly become the dominant garlic.